An Examined Life

What does this body feel like?

It feels like a silken quilt, the kind that you can throw over yourself in early spring, that provides the perfect amount of warmth and softness. It feels tender, especially near the nape, neck, top of the chest, clavicle, and inner arms. It feels like a little pillow of mounded flesh, soft and rounded. It is satin-smooth in places, hard and bony in others. It is lean, sometimes dry and anxious. There are cuts in tender places, scars and birthmarks, remnants of an incision from an appendectomy, vaccination and chickenpox memories. It has stretch marks that don’t owe themselves to childbirth. It has dark-light patches and vacant spaces, hollowed out. There are small curves, stable enough to rest the palms. There are lines on smooth surfaces. There is roughness, abrasions, abrasiveness, and a silhouette that hides easily.